The latest iPhone, released in October in the U.S. and other major markets, has been a massive hit with consumers  Apple controlled nearly 24 percent of the global smartphone market in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to market research reports. First-quarter iPhone 4S sales aren't expected to drop off, say DigiTimes unnamed supply chain sources, and that's got companies like Samsung, HTC, Nokia, and LG Electronics playing a waiting game "to avoid competing too directly" with Apple's handset.

Instead, those smartphone makers will wait to launch their newest models at the 2012 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona being held from Feb. 27 through March 1, the tech journal's sources.

Maybe so, but the trouble with this claim is that in recent years the Barcelona gathering has become a major launching pad for new phones from manufacturers not named Apple. If the aforementioned companies really are holding back their product launches to put some more miles on the track between their new products and the iPhone 4S locomotive, it's pretty convenient that they've got arguably the biggest smartphone showcase of the year to facilitate playing that waiting game.

Take Samsung, which by some accounts had at least as big a chunk of the smartphone market as Apple did in 2011. Sure, the Korean tech giant probably doesn't relish going head-to-head with a new iPhone in any given quarter, but do Samsung decision-makers really factor such a preference into their long-term product release roadmaps in any significant way?

Damon Poeter got his start in journalism working for the English-language daily newspaper The Nation in Bangkok, Thailand. He covered everything from local news to sports and entertainment before settling on technology in the mid-2000s. Prior to joining PCMag, Damon worked at CRN and the Gilroy Dispatch. He has also written for the San Francisco Chronicle and Japan Times, among other newspapers and periodicals.
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